Cogglamp wrote:I would have rather seen the monetary policy gurus find a way to divert that money towards R&D instead of supporting asset prices.

R&D toward what? US labour is way too expensive to produce anything domestically for sale on the world market, and things produced for the domestic market represent a net loss in trade balance as you pay foreign suppliers for some or all of the raw materials, but don't recoup any money in off-shore sales. See: auto manufacturing. If there was a global market for poorly-made, inefficient, expensive behemoths, Detroit wouldn't be dead.

R&D generally ends in a licensed product that is then produced in the East for worldwide distribution, but that opens the door to the knock-offs market, and shifts the profit to foreign manufacturing companies, with the US companies only getting royalties, not jobs.

The challenge the US faces is how to shift out of a service economy when the rest of the world is paring back on service spending in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency, and when the financial service industry basically collapsed.

I reckon the US expectation for standard of living is artificially inflated during a time of heavy spending (multiple wars) and economic downturn, and that the American people are going to have to get used to the idea of making a lot less money in order to compete on the world stage before R&D will reap any dividends in the creation of new jobs.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually had any formal training in macroeconomics, are is your understanding gleaned entirely from the internet?

Theckhd wrote:big numbers are the in-game way of expressing that Brekkie's penis is huge.

Meh, lets have a little semblance of fair play here. I get that you're mostly echoing the headline of that article, but it's main stream media, so some critical thought is generally required.

First, I'd start with the notion that corporations and unions are largely considered similar entities in the political sphere. Both tend to have large amounts of resources and often lobby for short-sighted legislation which supports their interest and only their interest. So it then becomes a bit dishonest to equate a corporation with itself, while equating the teachers union with teachers. Further taking that to the next level and suggesting that Romney believes a public institution is a person, but that a private entity (the teacher) is not a person is just too much spin even for this thread.

I think it's hard not to recognize Romney's point which is pretty valid. That public employee unions do often create a conflict of interest, and it's one that has played out to the detriment of many state budgets around the country. These are an ever growing group of people that are very active in the democratic process, contributing significant sums of money to the people who are then supposed to negotiate with them on behalf of the public. I don't think any of that can reasonably refuted.

Now, I don't really agree with his solution (as generally vague as it is), if you are going to allow private funding of campaigns, then you don't get to cherry pick who it comes from, but that's a far cry from suggesting that he's saying that teachers should be personally limited in their contributions beyond the normal limits.

Edit: As for the airplane comment, I'm a bit surprised by the reaction (and the equally dumb comments people are making), but while it's certainly boneheaded I think I understand what he was getting at. Besides, it could be much worse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg

-It was indeed a silly article.

-I'd rather not have ANY organizations able to directly influence the political process, but since the Supreme Court ruled that they can, it's only fair that ALL such organizations get that opportunity. It's not very honest to attack Unions for political contributions while being fine with Corporations doing so (because the Corporations happen to be the side supporting you), any more than the reverse claim is from the Democrat side (because some of them DO make it). As you said, you don't get to cherry-pick.

-While Unions are overall a positive force for protecting workers in the private sector, I really dislike the idea of public sector unions. The problem with government workers unionizing is that there is no restraining factor. In a normal business, Unions can only demand so many concessions before the company becomes unprofitable and goes out of business, resulting in them all losing their jobs, so there is some restraint due to self-interest. The Union workers no more want their plant to go out of business than the owners of the plant do. Obviously, this can't happen when the employer is the government, because the government isn't affected by market forces. Overall, I think public sector unions are a bad idea. As a government employee, I know that the government can quite frequently cut corners on the backs of its employees benefits, and totally violate their commitments to you with no recourse, which sucks, but the ills of public sector unions outweigh this.

Theckhd wrote:big numbers are the in-game way of expressing that Brekkie's penis is huge.

Towards ways and methods of increasing the intelligence and empathy of human beings.

After all, there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other.

Brekkie wrote:-While Unions are overall a positive force for protecting workers in the private sector, I really dislike the idea of public sector unions. The problem with government workers unionizing is that there is no restraining factor. In a normal business, Unions can only demand so many concessions before the company becomes unprofitable and goes out of business, resulting in them all losing their jobs, so there is some restraint due to self-interest. The Union workers no more want their plant to go out of business than the owners of the plant do. Obviously, this can't happen when the employer is the government, because the government isn't affected by market forces. Overall, I think public sector unions are a bad idea. As a government employee, I know that the government can quite frequently cut corners on the backs of its employees benefits, and totally violate their commitments to you with no recourse, which sucks, but the ills of public sector unions outweigh this.

That's exactly right. I'd add though that I think allowing government workers to collectively bargain is fair, but then that's what creates the union and the difficulties that you point out. Some places do have additional legislation to act as a safeguard, in many places it's illegal for them to strike. However, that's rarely enforced unless the strike goes on for a very long time.

Cogglamp wrote:I would have rather seen the monetary policy gurus find a way to divert that money towards R&D instead of supporting asset prices.

R&D toward what? US labour is way too expensive to produce anything domestically for sale on the world market, and things produced for the domestic market represent a net loss in trade balance as you pay foreign suppliers for some or all of the raw materials, but don't recoup any money in off-shore sales. See: auto manufacturing. If there was a global market for poorly-made, inefficient, expensive behemoths, Detroit wouldn't be dead.

R&D generally ends in a licensed product that is then produced in the East for worldwide distribution, but that opens the door to the knock-offs market, and shifts the profit to foreign manufacturing companies, with the US companies only getting royalties, not jobs.

The challenge the US faces is how to shift out of a service economy when the rest of the world is paring back on service spending in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency, and when the financial service industry basically collapsed.

I reckon the US expectation for standard of living is artificially inflated during a time of heavy spending (multiple wars) and economic downturn, and that the American people are going to have to get used to the idea of making a lot less money in order to compete on the world stage before R&D will reap any dividends in the creation of new jobs.

That's a pretty myopic point of view. You're only looking at from the production standpoint. Jobs would be created in sales, supply chain management, upper management, third party vendor services, logistics, warehousing, patent law, services supporting the where the headquarters might be (cafes, grocery stores, dry cleaners, auto shops) etc. The list goes on and on.

R&D benefits are felt for years. Look at GPS, the internet, new pharmacy drugs and oncology treatments, 3D printing, improvements in extracting resources. You're already the benefactor of R&D given that you even replied to my post.

R&D not only creates jobs but creates social wealth through diffusion of knowledge/ideas and bringing people together who might not have otherwise had a chance to meet. Do you use Skype? Use a cell phone? Use the internet? Look at this forum for goodness sake. Here we are, in a world of 6+ billion and I'm able to share ideas and thoughts with people in Korea, Australia, Europe, Russia, and North America.

Does every R&D investment work? No, but not funding it is basically saying we've solved every problem. We have a moral obligation to keep funding R&D because new ideas/productivity gains are worth passing along to the next generation.

(Let's not forget that population growth has slowed down tremendously and we are already having to do more with less but thanks to things like cloud servers, LiveMeeting, and fiber optics, I no longer have to jump on a plane, fly to San Francsico, and sit down in front of people to lay out business plans. I can just send them an invite and do it over the internet.)

The benefits of R&D are massive. It's a long term growth play, it always has been. That's the whole point of R&D. We have moved away from it and we are now reaping that harvest.

Fridmarr wrote:Edit: As for the airplane comment, I'm a bit surprised by the reaction (and the equally dumb comments people are making), but while it's certainly boneheaded I think I understand what he was getting at.

It shows a distinct lack of education. He was getting at "geeze, why don't they just open the windows to let the smoke out" which is a ridiculously stupid comment. I don't mean stupid in the "47% of America isn't going to vote for me so I don't care about them" campaign-tanking kind of way, but stupid in the "hey, I see a window. Pardon me while I go lick it" kind of way.

The leader of our country should have at least a basic grasp of science. I thought that a college education was pretty much a prerequisite for the job, after all. I'm not asking for them to be up to speed on cutting edge drug research, or pushing the field of theoretical physics here. I'm asking for a basic understanding of how the world works on a third grade level.

That's all. I don't think I'm asking too much of a candidate here - especially since these are people who will have some direct influence on the future of research. It's stupidity like this that runs rampant in government and fosters an I-don't-care attitude toward actual important things like NASA. Shutting down our space program was a truly boneheaded move, and Obama's actually fairly intelligent, with a good grasp on How Shit Works™. Now imagine Romney in office - a guy who doesn't even understand that "there's no air up there" is Actually A Thing™.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

But see, you have to make assumptions to reach that point. Admittedly, since he's a reasonably intelligent adult, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on some of the specifics, maybe I shouldn't but I would with anybody.

For instance, I'm just assuming he's not asking why they don't just throw open a window at 35k thousand feet, I'm assuming he's asking why that's not an option at any altitude or speed. Why it's not possible at all. It would certainly be safe to do so at lower altitudes while the smoke in the plane could cause problems.

It's also not immediately fatal to open a window at such altitudes when you have Oxygen masks. I mean we have had planes with significant breeches of their cabin at high altitude before. The pilots (who by regulation are already wearing masks) will bring the plane down quickly to restore pressure. People who don't quickly get their masks on passout, but once at a lower altitude they generally can breathe again and wake back up. Anyhow it's all part of a comprehensive plan. It's actually not all that stupid, though it would almost never be of use. I actually don't know that it isn't possible to vent the cabin on all such planes.

On the flip side, the number of articles I read citing how stupid his comment was, only to follow that up with "people would be sucked out the window" just made me want to facepalm.

Fridmarr wrote:But see, you have to make assumptions to reach that point. Admittedly, since he's a reasonably intelligent adult, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on some of the specifics, maybe I shouldn't but I would with anybody.

For instance, I'm just assuming he's not asking why they don't just throw open a window at 35k thousand feet, I'm assuming he's asking why that's not an option at any altitude or speed. Why it's not possible at all. It would certainly be safe to do so at lower altitudes while the smoke in the plane could cause problems.

It's also not immediately fatal to open a window at such altitudes when you have Oxygen masks. I mean we have had planes with significant breeches of their cabin at high altitude before. The pilots (who by regulation are already wearing masks) will bring the plane down quickly to restore pressure. People who don't quickly get their masks on passout, but once at a lower altitude they generally can breathe again and wake back up. Anyhow it's all part of a comprehensive plan. It's actually not all that stupid, though it would almost never be of use. I actually don't know that it isn't possible to vent the cabin on all such planes.

On the flip side, the number of articles I read citing how stupid his comment was, only to follow that up with "people would be sucked out the window" just made me want to facepalm.

The more complex something is, the more likely it is to fail. Therefore, its just simpler and safer to make windows fixed at all tmes.

Also, the captain of british airways flight 5390 actually proved its possible to be sucked out of a missing window in a plane....en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

Well I'm not suggesting that they make the windows able to be opened. And as it turns out, some planes do provide the pilot a controlled ability to vent the cabin in such situations. Especially if they don't want to drop the oxygen masks because of the potential fire hazzard.

Look, I think it was a boneheaded thing to say, but not nearly as stupid as some of the comments suggest. Of course, I also heard that the reporter who reported it is saying that Romney was clearly joking, but who knows they always recant that sort of thing.

As to that flight, that was the big windscreen on the front of the plane and even then he wasn't actually blown all the way out, he did survive. I'm talking about the windows on the side of the plane which would require squishing your average adult with forces that I don't think are possible from a pressurized plane. I think the bigger threat is temperature and pressure.

Fivelives wrote:That's all. I don't think I'm asking too much of a candidate here - especially since these are people who will have some direct influence on the future of research. It's stupidity like this that runs rampant in government and fosters an I-don't-care attitude toward actual important things like NASA. Shutting down our space program was a truly boneheaded move, and Obama's actually fairly intelligent[citation needed], with a good grasp on How Shit Works™[citation needed]. Now imagine Romney in office - a guy who doesn't even understand that "there's no air up there" is Actually A Thing™[citation needed].

Cogglamp wrote:That's a pretty myopic point of view. You're only looking at from the production standpoint. Jobs would be created in sales, supply chain management, upper management, third party vendor services, logistics, warehousing, patent law, services supporting the where the headquarters might be (cafes, grocery stores, dry cleaners, auto shops) etc. The list goes on and on.

R&D benefits are felt for years. Look at GPS, the internet, new pharmacy drugs and oncology treatments, 3D printing, improvements in extracting resources. You're already the benefactor of R&D given that you even replied to my post.

R&D not only creates jobs but creates social wealth through diffusion of knowledge/ideas and bringing people together who might not have otherwise had a chance to meet. Do you use Skype? Use a cell phone? Use the internet? Look at this forum for goodness sake. Here we are, in a world of 6+ billion and I'm able to share ideas and thoughts with people in Korea, Australia, Europe, Russia, and North America.

Does every R&D investment work? No, but not funding it is basically saying we've solved every problem. We have a moral obligation to keep funding R&D because new ideas/productivity gains are worth passing along to the next generation.

(Let's not forget that population growth has slowed down tremendously and we are already having to do more with less but thanks to things like cloud servers, LiveMeeting, and fiber optics, I no longer have to jump on a plane, fly to San Francsico, and sit down in front of people to lay out business plans. I can just send them an invite and do it over the internet.)

The benefits of R&D are massive. It's a long term growth play, it always has been. That's the whole point of R&D. We have moved away from it and we are now reaping that harvest.

But very little of that tech is made in the USA. Most of the time it is licensed and produced overseas, because labour is cheaper overseas. Support centres are in India. Cloud server components are made in various parts of Asia.

A guy decides to create a cloud server business. He advertises and gets businesses to sign up for his services. His company is American, and the people he markets to are also American, so those are dollars that circulate around the US. But to set up the business, he pays money to overseas companies, directly or indirectly, for his server and networking hardware.

At what point does his business get that money back into the US? It doesn't. By setting up that business to serve US companies, he has sent a small portion of the US's wealth overseas with no hope of gaining it back. He has increased the trade deficit.

I'm not complaining about R&D necessarily, but the US is so service-oriented that they are vulnerable to downturns in the economy when people cut back on their service consumption.

I think the US needs to get back into the real-goods market in any way they can, so it has something more to export than ideas and military presence.

In 2011, the GDP of the US was $15 trillion. But of that only $1.5 trillion was exported, which was offset by $2.2 trillion in imports. If the US wants a healthy economy, it needs to stop bleeding money like that.

But the wealth of America isn't a fixed value. It's not like this guy carved out a small piece of some established chunk of wealth, and threw a little offshore never to return. Rather, he generated wealth both locally and offshore. Locally for his company, employees, suppliers, and notably his customers who gain a usage of his product which presumably increases their capability or why else do they bother with the purchase. It's a net gain for GDP.

Almost any business in any westernized country that isn't explicitly an export business is surely increasing their trade trade deficit. I mean most westernized countries are importing all sorts of goods so it would be difficult to imagine all products that they use being domestic. That's not necessarily a big negative. I'd love to see us establish a more secure footing in the "real-goods" market but that will require some investment in R&D or a rather painful market correction process as our economy lurches to the point that we can compete straight up in that market. I don't want to really see the latter.

Look, I think it was a boneheaded thing to say, but not nearly as stupid as some of the comments suggest. Of course, I also heard that the reporter who reported it is saying that Romney was clearly joking, but who knows they always recant that sort of thing.

WHen I first heard that, I tried to think of any possible context it could actually be humorous in. The "That was so stupid" is the only context that it's actually funny in as far as I can see.

Romney using meta-humour kgo.

It's interesting because the idea that it was made as a joke ("clearly joking") would straight out negate the possiblity of BOD that he was suggesting plane on the ground, not mid air. *shrug*

Last edited by Darielle on Thu Sep 27, 2012 5:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Fridmarr wrote:Well I'm not suggesting that they make the windows able to be opened. And as it turns out, some planes do provide the pilot a controlled ability to vent the cabin in such situations. Especially if they don't want to drop the oxygen masks because of the potential fire hazzard.

Look, I think it was a boneheaded thing to say, but not nearly as stupid as some of the comments suggest. Of course, I also heard that the reporter who reported it is saying that Romney was clearly joking, but who knows they always recant that sort of thing.

As to that flight, that was the big windscreen on the front of the plane and even then he wasn't actually blown all the way out, he did survive. I'm talking about the windows on the side of the plane which would require squishing your average adult with forces that I don't think are possible from a pressurized plane. I think the bigger threat is temperature and pressure.

I actually give Romney the benefit of the doubt on this one. And either way, it has been made a mountain out of a molehill.

The way I imagine it, he was talking about it being more effective to air out the plane while it is landed and sitting on the ground afterwards if the windows could open.The answer to why the windows DON'T open for these sorts of purposes is obviously "because some idiot passenger WOULD open them when he shouldn't".

Regardless, it's not all that important, and we should be discussing substantive issues, not quote-mining for "GOTCHA" moments.

And after all, we shouldn't let one dumb thing Romney said in public overshadow all the dumb things he's said in private. (Lol, sorry, couldn't resist. )

Theckhd wrote:big numbers are the in-game way of expressing that Brekkie's penis is huge.

What would be the point exactly of allowing windows to open on the ground? At that point they can open the cabin doors. Maybe I'm just reading into it, but it came across to me that they should be able to vent the smoke in the air so they don't have to make the emergency landing in the first place.

Skye1013 wrote:What would be the point exactly of allowing windows to open on the ground? At that point they can open the cabin doors. Maybe I'm just reading into it, but it came across to me that they should be able to vent the smoke in the air so they don't have to make the emergency landing in the first place.

Joking or not, it was still a pretty stupid comment.

I'm sure they'd still have to land, at least they better lol. If I'm in a plane that catches on fire even briefly, I want it on the ground as soon as possible. When I checked I read that some planes do have a way to bring in outside air in a controlled pressurized manner and it can be used to aid with that sort of thing.

I'm pretty doubtful venting the cabin is of much use in a real fire on a plane in just about any situation.

As a joke, the way it was described (apparently he rolled his eyes as he said it) it's certainly not particularly funny, but it's the sort of small talk humor you hear constantly around the office place. Again, I have no idea if that jocular context is true.

Brekkie wrote:Regardless, it's not all that important, and we should be discussing substantive issues, not quote-mining for "GOTCHA" moments.

I appreciate that you're trying to emphasize your statement, but when he continuously waffles on the issues, it doesn't really give much of a platform besides knowing that he is against LGBT rights. So since I've already determined that I don't want him as president, I might as well get enjoyment out of his stupidity.

Talking about how Obama is more experienced in political debates, when Romney has just come out of dozens of them in the Primaries, as well as having had a far longer and more diverse political career, is just kind of silly.And it's not just that Obama is a far better communicator, it's that the basis for Romney's campaign has been to NOT tell voters anything specific at all.

Every time he tells the truth or gives any real specifics about his plan, it hurts him. By keeping everything vague and as hand-wavey as possible, he's served as kind of a Candidate Mad Libs, where you can basically just fill in the blanks with whatever YOU imagine the correct answers are and project that onto Romney, who glowing describes how his un-described plan will create a rosy future which solves everything the moment he takes office.When forced to commit to specifics, such as bringing Ryan aboard effectively signalling that he espouses the Ryan plan to reform (i.e. Cut) Medicare, it jars people out of that Create-Your-Own-Candidate comfort zone and inspires backlash.

But you can only ride anti-incumbent feeling so far. Many voters are dissatisfied with Obama, but they want somebody with a well-designed and developed PLAN, and Romney doesn't really provide that except some non-specific assertions that we need more tax cuts for high-earners (a group he just HAPPENS to belong to) and less regulation (of industries he just HAPPENS to get most of his income from), which is the same formula that Republicans have been trying to pitch for years. Voters have short memories, but they DO remember that the actions taken during the Bush (and to a lesser extent, the Clinton) administration which are perceived to have led to the recession were big tax cuts for the wealthy and extensive deregulation of the financial industry. So saying that more of the same will be the silver bullet rings pretty hollow. Maybe there is a case to be made for tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation, and maybe those things are positive, but it sounds like a one-size-fits-all-situations GOP sacred cow, not a directed solution for the economy that people (particularly the grass roots Tea Party and the Libertarians) are looking for.

So going into these debates, Romney really doesn't have any potential winning strategy to pursue.The way I see it, there are several possible scenarios:

1) Romney narrates the present economic situation, without making any particular specific assertions other than "Things Are Bad", and kind of wink wink nudge nudge at viewers that this is, by implication, Obama's fault by framing comparisons to the peak point during the Bush administration prior to the collapse.

The problem with this is that Obama can counter with the true observation that things are consistently trending better over the past 11 months (unemployment steadily going down, growth and job creation climbing at a steady rate despite cuts in public sector jobs, the market un-fucking its self). We aren't back in the black compared to pre-crash yet, but it's headed in the right direction. So trying to convince viewers that "Well, yeah, but you didn't fix things fast or well ENOUGH!" is kind of an awkward argument to make in a debate format, no matter whether that assertion is true or false. It would look too much like whining, as well as be conceding that Obama's programs have had an impact.

2) Romney just paints a picture of an entirely different, and contrasting, reality from anything Obama says, and claims that all Obama's statistics are lies and propaganda.

This is probably the best chance Romney has of pulling out at least a draw, and seems to be the strategy his campaign is tending towards (they've issued several statements and articles laying the groundwork for a "Obama is lying about everything! All that stuff about us being in recovery? Don't believe it!" narrative).If this happens, the liberal-leaning FactChecker sites will declare all of Romney's claims to be bologna, and all the conservative-leaning FactChecker sites will declare all of Obama's claims to be similarly bunk, and no one will be quite sure who to believe.

The problem with this strategy is that it doesn't transfer very well to the following debates about issues other than the economy. In particular, in debate over social issues and Foreign Policy he'd get thrashed if he tried it, since people perceive these issues to be more black-and-white. It's pretty hard to try to convince people that Osama Bin Laden isn't dead or that Libya isn't a democracy now or that open service by homosexuals in the military has had a negative impact on anything by just throwing a lot of confusing statistics at them like you can with economics.

3) Romney approaches the debate like an attack ad, and tries to spend the whole time discussing Obama's record in order to cash in on anti-incumbent frustrations.

This would work, if it were ANYONE but Romney attempting it. But Romney's notorious flip flopping shoots himself in the foot here. If Romney brings up Obamacare, all Obama has to do is thank him sincerely for the inspiration. If he fear-mongers about guns, Obama can casually remind him about his assault weapons ban he signed into law in Massachusetts while bringing up the multiple gun regulations that he, Obama, has gotten repealed. If Romney brings up the Auto-Industry Bailout, he's trapped in a corner by the fact that he, Romney, was against it, and yet it undeniably worked.Accusations of crony-capitalism with Solyndra will ring hollow coming from a technocrat like Romney from a corrupt state like Masssachusetts. Similarly, Obama's love for green energy is safe from attack due to Romney's past support for carbon tax legislation.And any mention of abortion or homosexuals will easily spin out of control and make him look like the religious loony caricature liberals and women fear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my opinion, Romney will fail because he is trying to simultaneously serve too many masters. That's why he has been straight-jacketed into staying so vague; if he commits to anything coherent either way, he will piss somebody off. Attempting to marry small-government fiscal conservative libertarians, with trickle-down supply side economics technocrats, "spread freedom because 'MERICA" neo-cons, and "I just care about stopping abortions and homosexuals" evangelicals, has not been pretty. In particular, the libertarians and the technocrats are almost diametrically opposed, by definition.So he can't lay out a detailed Ryan-style Grand Plan for the country; it would get picked apart. So instead of making his own Ryan-Budget, he just got Ryan himself; the clear intended message being "I do HAVE a plan! And it will work, TRUST me! Just elect me here real quick and I'll tell you all about it, but I swear it's gonna be great!".

A good example is a comparison of the two candidate's positions on Energy Policy; something I think anyone would agree is of critical importance and deserves serious thought by any candidate.

The President's Plan, a 44 page document broken down by topic, is thoughtful, diverse, and balanced. It does a good job of being focused around ideas which are key bipartisan consensus points; such as the benefit of exploiting the Natural Gas boom (which not only helps our energy independence from imported oil, is also better for the environment because, no matter how you look at it, Natural gas is replacing Coal. And Coal is far worse.). Obama has trouble with branding though, and has not done a good job of communicating his ideas or properly using PR to make Americans aware of the effects his policies have been having.

Romney's Plan, on the other hand, is fundamentally unserious. The document spends most of its time attacking Mr Obama, without paying much attention to the fact that in the hypothetical scenario where Mr Romney gets to be president, Mr Obama would be out of office. This is a 9-page document that devotes 3 pages to an essay from Jim Talent, a former senator from Missouri, who boasts that America is the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas".

The contrast is striking, and holds for pretty much any issue you examine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So what would be a winning strategy for Romney?

I think he would have had more success if he had branded his image as "Scrooge McRich Guy who HATES waste", and embraced the Small Government movement. There's a developed widespread school of thought supporting that worldview, it contrasts nicely with Obama's strategy and is attractive to independents, and doesn't look like a mere mindless continuation of the Bush Policies perceived to have gotten us into this mess in the first place.

His 47% comments fit in nicely with this strategy, believe it or not. Obama has made the repeated pitch that "times are hard, and the wealthy need to pay their fair share". This handed Romney the opportunity to point at the lower classes and go "Ah, but so do they!", and use that as justification for supporting large cuts and restructuring of entitlement programs, and for making the tax code more regressive.He can't do that while simultaneously advocating for tax cuts for the rich, however. Cuts for the wealthy at the same time as gutting social programs for the poor looks like plutocracy and favoritism. Cuts to programs across the board, while keeping taxes static, looks like responsible belt-tightening. It also sets up the democrats to look like the selfish, self-interested, milk-the-system-at-the-expense-of-society ones if they try to fight it.

Last edited by Brekkie on Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Theckhd wrote:big numbers are the in-game way of expressing that Brekkie's penis is huge.